The board, for instance, will not be required to hold public meetings or publish minutes of its discussions. Financial disclosure documents that would reveal potential conflicts of interest also will not be released to the public.

“I’m a big proponent of transparency,” Carney told The News Journal last month. “But there is a balance we need to strike between being transparent and being confidential when necessary. How we do that will be something the board will need to look at once it’s in place.”

There’s no fucking balance here. It’s why Carney and the Chamber made sure this wasn’t a public agency. (Deep cleansing breath). OK, let’s check out the membership:

Governor John Carney (co-chair)

Rod Ward, President, CSC (co-chair)

Desmond Baker, Founder, Desmond A. Baker & Associates

Alan Brangman, Executive Vice President, University of Delaware

Patrick Callahan, Founder, CompassRed

Eric Cheek, Associate Vice President, Delaware State University

Doneene Damon, Executive Vice President, Richards, Layton, & Finger

Jeanmarie Desmond, Co-Controller, DowDuPont

Robert Herrera, Co-Founder, The Mill

Nick Lambrow, President of Delaware Region, M&T Bank

Senator Greg Lavelle, Delaware State Senate

Greg Moore, Vice President, Becker Morgan Group

Lori Palmer, Ventures Executive Leader, Trellist Marketing Technology

Rob Rider, CEO, O.A. Newton

Representative Bryon Short, Delaware House of Representatives

Richelle Vible, Executive Director, Catholic Charities

Senator Jack Walsh, Delaware State Senate

Representative Lyndon Yearick, Delaware House of Representatives

Anyone see any possibility of conflicts-of-interest here? Yes, I thought so. And what a group of legislators! Greg Lavelle, Bryon Short, Lyndon Yearick, Chamber lackeys all, and Jack Walsh, who we still don’t know anything about.

Oh, and they’re still months away from being operational:

One of the first things the new board is expected to tackle is the search for a chief executive officer and staff to handle the partnership’s day-to-day operations.

Until then, Delaware’s economic development efforts – such as the pursuit of Amazon’s HQ2 project – will be headed by the Delaware Division of Small Business, Development and Tourism, a state agency created at the same time the former Delaware Economic Development Office was dissolved.

I’ve been around the Delaware General Assembly a long time. This is one of the most disgraceful and short-sighted initiatives I have ever seen. The fact that taxpayers are paying for this crony capitalism is a scandal in and of itself–and it’s only a preamble to the scandals that will inevitably follow. The only question is: Can anybody penetrate the veil of secrecy to report them to the public?

Arthur,
It depends on how old you are.
Back in the day, Bob Weiner, the New Castle County councilman, talked very much like a D but put an R after his name because, at the time, there was no way a D could get elected in Brandywine Hundred.
And Margaret Rose Henry, if you recall, once put an R behind her name to facilitate election the the state Senate. She did switch back to D pretty quickly.

The whole nation is like that to some degree. Many of the dems fly the false flag by obsessively supporting some narrow liberal social issue relating to sexual matters then screw average people where it impacts them the most.

The fact that this passed the GA without any guarantees of transparency and no conflicts of interest is SHOCKING….. where is Common Cause? where is ACLU? where are al the good gov’t types? there should be a bi-partisan group calling for the necessary safeguards. Hello, its still PUBLIC MONEY! this is Delaware way at its very worst!!!!

and Carney says he believes in transparency, was his quite. Give me a break..
what a JOKE!!

Not even 100% sure this set up is constitutional… needs to be challenged.

@chris: It was all widely reported at the time. Nobody thinks it’s a good idea except for the Chamber of Commerce.

At the time I pointed out what a farce it is to let existing companies decide which start-ups get funded. Here’s a guarantee: Anyone with an idea that would disrupt the business model of any powerful business in the Chamber will never get a dime. It’s akin to letting the home team’s players call all the fouls.

Common Cause lost its good-government chops when John Flaherty left. DelCOG, even though it’s the current Flaherty vehicle, is a useless Nancy Willing / Christine Whitehead-driven whining forum. The ACLU has other priorities. And you won’t hear if TNJ challenges it because they only report if they win. And David Ledford wants too badly to be best buds with the players that he won’t lift a finger.

“Common Cause lost its good-government chops when John Flaherty left. DelCOG, even though it’s the current Flaherty vehicle, is a useless Nancy Willing / Christine Whitehead-driven whining forum.”

Nice one from a cowardly anony. Way to go. I resigned from this organization a few months ago but not because it isn’t a great asset for the state. You must be a protector for LLCs in Delaware considering your venom is directed at Whitehead who is instrumental via DelCOG with Flaherty and Kowalko in attempts to stop the fraud and laundering that goes on through our Division of Corporations.

“And David Ledford wants too badly to be best buds with the players that he won’t lift a finger.”

When you have his job, you don’t have to cotton up to them because they come looking to schmooze you. You will almost never find a newspaper that isn’t pro-business, because the real job of a newspaper is selling advertising. It’s more a business-to-business decision.

This also was the case when the state started throwing money at the Wilmington riverfront. The News Journal led the cheerleaders, because the expenditure brought in more businesses that advertised.

R.E.: I WAS sleepwalking elsewhere. I love the Leadbelly photo as well. From its inception, Arden was Delaware’s first voluntarily-integrated community. Dates back to the beginning of the 20th Century.

@Chris
There were 6 good government types who debated against and voted against this latest Chamber, Business Roundtable, Corporate legislative lackey inspired taxpayer swindle. They certainly deserve some thanks and the aye’s deserve letters of disgust. The nays were:
Bennett
Heffernan
K. Williams
Kowalko
Lynn
Matthews

Bryon Short is a Chamber lackey. Ignored Beau Biden’s pleas to stop the BC/BS-Highmark merger with the comment: “There’s nothing I can do.”

Buried minimum wage legislation in his Business Lapdog Committee not once, not twice, but three times.

Voted to repeal the Estate Tax.

Sponsored the bill to create this clusterbleep of an economic development privatization. As in the PRIME sponsor. BTW, Sen. Walsh, Karen Peterson’s successor, was a sponsor of the bill and has been appointed to this crony racket.

Yes, Short voted like a D on marriage equality. But, he’s a Carper acolyte on everything else. Not surprising, since he worked in Carper’s office. He needs a progressive challenger, stat.